


being human

by confidantes



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 00:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confidantes/pseuds/confidantes
Summary: Dino is not your typical vampire hunter. Hibari is not your typical vampire. So their relationship, therefore, isn't exactly what you'd call typical.(accidentally cute i'm sorry)





	being human

**Author's Note:**

> posting a bunch of old fic from 2014 i dug up, don't mind me

He thinks it must be a sign that his heartbeat quickens whenever Hibari’s fangs ghost over his neck. He’s not immune to it, of course – the fear of an animal’s teeth so close to his throat, the wild panic of possibly being torn apart by instinct alone – but there’s also a part of him that thinks he’s Mina, and this is just Dracula all over again.

Except he doesn’t die, except he hasn’t read Bram Stoker (ironic, given his profession), and Hibari is not a ghost when he wakes in the morning.

 

-

 

This is how it happens: not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Hibari is at a bar, dressed to the nines in a tasteful Armani suit, balancing a martini in his left hand, and Dino can smell the blood off of him from twenty feet away.

He holds a business card holder against the Japanese man’s back (the one night he forgets his gun, dammit) and says, “You can come quietly with me, or we can do this the hard way.” Hopes the vampire doesn’t call him out on his bluff. Hopes he won’t kill him and everyone else in the bar right then and there.

Hibari, to his credit, does neither. He slants an eye towards Dino, barely moving his head to do so. “Forward of you, hunter. But I imagine there are more efficient ways of getting me in your bed.”

Dino turns red. “Wha – th-that’s not –”

There’s a hint of a smile, if Dino can make it out, on the man’s lips. “Constitution like yours, I wonder how long you’ve made it in the business without getting killed." 

And he walks away, slipping between the crowd, leaving Dino gaping and open-mouthed.

 

-

 

Fact: the only way to kill a vampire is by beheading or burning.

The Salem Witch Trials and the French Revolution saw an exodus in their respective times. 

Nothing harms vampires either, unlike the fairytales, as many an unfortunate hunter had found out over the years. 

It’s said that the first-ever vampire was an unholy union of angel and demon. So far no one’s been able to prove this theory wrong, and as far as most are concerned, the complete truth of the matter.

Fact: vampires can only really be identified by their pale skin and resilience to cold, which is why they’ve been able to thrive for so long without detection in the Baltic and Slavic states. You could even say they’ve made a profession of wolves living among sheep.

Fact: if Reborn is the strongest vampire hunter around, then he must have met his match in Hibari Kyouya.

 

-

 

It’s peculiar how Hibari holds himself back when touching Dino, and also doesn’t quite know how to hold himself back. Dino wakes up with bruises all up and down his arms in the shapes in fingerprints, and his ribs ache more often than not.

"I’m not accustomed to restraining myself in the heat of the moment,” Hibari says by way of explanation, and Dino can only imagine how many men and women he might have broken in the past. 

“Kyouya, is that concern I detect in your voice?” he teases, wincing as he attempts to reach the middle of his back with the Bengay.

Hibari makes a sour face, then uncrosses his legs and stands up from the couch. There’s a frightened lump in Dino’s throat until Hibari holds out an impatient hand. “Hand it over.” Speechless, Dino places the tube of Bengay in his open palm. Hibari squeezes a dollop of ointment onto his fingers and begins kneading it into the skin of his back.

“You’re a hunter,” Hibari says, continuing the small, circular rubs as he speaks, “so you should know the facts. Vampires are as invincible and as strong as gods. Daylight, garlic, and crosses don’t bother us. Bullets merely slow us down. I can run faster than a horse. The way I’m touching you now –” he depresses a thumb with terrifying strength, to which Dino makes a strangled noise of pain “– more of my effort goes into  _not_ hurting you than it does to touch you. To touch you, Cavallone, it is an allowance. To touch you, hunter, is  _mercy._ ” He wrests one of Dino’s arms from his side, wrenches it against his back, and shoves Dino face-first into the table in front of them. Leaning in until his lips skim the outermost shell of Dino’s ear, he murmurs, “So do not mistake my tone for concern. It is pity that keeps you alive.”

As quick as he had forced Dino against the table, Hibari is gone. Dino picks his head up and rubs his cheek balefully.

“Yes,” he mutters to himself, “why  _have_ you kept me alive?”

 

-

 

Dino doesn’t stalk Hibari a few days after their first encounter out of pride – it’s out of curiosity.

Which is something he’s been warned against, and is rare in this industry. Most hunters he knows are motivated by loss, anguish, distrust. There’s hearsay that Reborn had lost a lover to those who walk the night, and he  _knows_ the brats, Gokudera and Yamamoto, had their mothers stolen from them. Which is why, with both parents alive, no former lovers dead, heart pumping perfectly healthy in his chest, he is somewhat of an anomaly in the landscape.

It isn’t just something so innocent as curiosity, however. What Dino desires to taste with his mouth is danger. What he  _wants_ is a challenge.

And there is no better challenge than a vampire who doesn’t act as his nature dictates him to.

Hibari is frightfully calm on the train when Dino sits across from him.

“Having your fun playing detective?” the vampire asks, bored.

Dino just smiles. “Reborn always did tell me my trailing skills were lacking.”

Hibari rolls his eyes. “That may be, but don’t you know anything? I can also smell you from several hundred meters away.”

Ah, of course. Dino folds his hands on his lap. “I remember reading somewhere that vampires prefer coastal weather. Something about the salt air invigorating their lungs. Is that true, Vampire-san?”

“If you’re here to bother me about such imbecilic things, I suggest you make haste before I acquaint your skull with the train tracks.”

Dino laughs. “Sorry, I’m just curious. About the vampire who doesn’t act like a vampire.”

“Says the hunter who doesn’t act like a hunter.”

Caught red-handed. Dino makes a bashful face. “I also read somewhere that in the 1800’s it was typical of men to pick up other men on the train.”

Hibari’s eye flick towards him with annoyance. “Do you believe everything you read, human?”

“Ahaha, no. I guess, in my own way, I’m just asking you out to dinner. I know this great shabu-shabu place down in Shibuya. Care to join?”

He says without missing a beat, “It’s common knowledge that vampires don’t consume anything other than blood.”

Dino chuckles. “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

Hibari says nothing for a while, which makes Dino think it’s a resounding  _no,_ but then the corner of Hibari’s lips twitch upward. “Well, well. Looks like you do know something, after all.”

 

-

 

Dinner is, all things considered, relatively normal.

They split a pork shabu shabu (Hibari absolutely cannot abide by beef, which Dino finds ironic for a carnivore), steam curling in their faces and making Dino’s cheeks go a bit red. Hibari is nothing but composed, chopsticks perfectly balanced between his fingers, meat and vegetables stacked neatly on his plate, categorized by shape. 

“Rather far from home,  _Italiano,_ ” he remarks.

“Haha, you say that like it’s a bad thing, Kyouya.” Hibari flinches – ten minutes in and they’re already on first name basis to this idiot. “Your accent is pretty good. Been there yourself, I see?”

“I’ve visited,” he says simply, a hundred years of teeth, ripped flesh, and blood dribbling down his chin flashing through his memory.

“Ah, yes. Well, as you probably know, there isn’t much business back in the old country anymore. Your kind has moved on to bigger and better places. Especially metropolises like Tokyo. More prey, I assume?”

“My kind,” Hibari repeats quietly. He plucks a piece of pork from his plate and places it neatly between his teeth.

Dino grins. “Nice fangs. What do you tell people when they ask about it?”

“That I have pronounced canines.” He kicks Dino under the table. “Shut up and let me enjoy my meal in peace.”

The hunter does shut up, but never takes his eyes from the vampire in that bared way Hibari fears so much. 

 

-

 

They crash through Dino’s door that night completely as both of them had expected – Hibari’s hands clutching blonde hair and tan neck, Dino’s already unfastening the $200 belt from around Hibari’s waist. In the dark against the sheets, Dino chuckles against Hibari’s collarbone. “Do you always take your prey to bed before you eat them?”

Hibari slaps the side of his head. “Just get on with it and fuck me already, hunter.”

 

-

 

What neither of them expect is: taking the prey to bed many, many more times after that.

What neither of them expect is: Dino waking up next to Hibari the morning after, because neither of them had tried to escape.

 

-

 

Fact: the way vampires are kept alive is by pure strain.

There is a price to pay for superhuman strength and reflexes, for invincibility, for immortality. There is a price to pay for the ease with which one snaps the neck of an elk or a bear or a human, there is a price for the skin one wears to contain the monster within.

Hunger. Constant, wild, painful hunger, for the only fuel strong enough to keep their Frankenstein bodies running.

Hibari doesn’t think vampires were made by angels and demons; he thinks vampires were made by humans foolish enough to cross a line.

 

-

 

And then there is the one time it did become dangerous.

 

-

 

It was the one time Hibari had to save the stupid human from another vampire, Dino is sprawled on the grass bleeding in seven different places, and Hibari is clenching his fists so hard he’s carving crescents in his palm. Dino, expectedly, is stupid enough to attempt a smile on his face. “Why don’t you just eat me already, Kyouya?”

He rounds on Dino with fire in his eyes. “Are you  _trying_ to anger me, hunter?”

He laughs. “I’m just saying. Way I am, it’s difficult to me around me right now, isn’t it.”

“It's  _always_ difficult to be around you, Cavallone.” He pauses. “I’ll call an ambulance. But you won’t see me again.”

He’s already turned away when he hears Dino’s feeble, “Wait.”

Against his better judgment, he stays his foot. “What is it.”

“Why are you so angry with me? I don’t understand. I don’t understand a lot of things about you, Kyouya, but this probably takes the cake.”

He glances at Dino over his shoulder. “It’s forbidden for me to kill my own kind.”

“And loving? What about that?”

He narrows his eyes. “What do you mean by that.”

“I mean,” Dino says with a strained laugh, “you used to be human once, didn’t you? Underneath all that teeth and superiority and murder, I can see him. The man who prefers pork to beef and always stacks his chopsticks neatly on top of his bowl after he’s done eating. The man who folds my clothes neatly even though I didn’t ask him to, who stopped eating humans when he moved back to Tokyo because he loves his home too much. The man who kisses me when he thinks I’m asleep and threatens me with his nature to spare me the pain for when he eventually leaves. I’m not optimistic enough to assume it’s love, Kyouya. I’m just optimistic enough that you’ll stay until it is.”

There’s a long breach of silence before Hibari says with his coldest voice, “Don’t,” (and this is when he starts walking away), “you dare say another word, unless you want me to bleed you out on the spot.”

Dino watches him leave.

 

-

 

When he’s discharged from the hospital, Dino expects to find his bed empty, and doesn’t.

“K-Kyouya…” He drops the bag of groceries in his hands, and the oranges rolls everywhere.

Hibari, lying on his stomach and bundled up in the voluminous comforter, merely cracks an eye open. “Turns out I do prefer coastal weather. But it’s not a vampire thing. It’s just me.”

Dino can’t help but throw his head back and laugh. Laughs, keeps laughing, doubles over in laughter kind of laughing. Hibari makes a noise and goes back to sleep.

“Yeah,” Dino says, climbing onto the bed and under the covers, “it’s just you.”


End file.
